Exclusive Interview With Fashion Stylist Yiorgos Mesimeris
YIORGOS MESIMERIS
STYLIST, CREATIVE DIRECTOR (HARD.CLO BRAND)
Interview Oben Budak
Photographer Nicholas Mastoras/Another Studio
What is your story? Tell us about yourself…
Fashion is familiar to me because the environment I grew up in was very close to it in many ways. For me fashion is passion and creation. It’s an endless source of inspiration. As a lover of minimalism I couldn’t but incorporate it into the style of my work. I believe it’s crucial that every work has it’s ‘signature’, not necessarily a name but a stylistic manner. And this is what I’m trying to cultivate through my work and the images I create with my team.
Being a professional stylist for many years, how and why did you choose to express your design skills through the T-shirt line?
The T-Shirt acts as a canvas mirroring my conceptual experiments, whilst holding a sense of their minimalist nature. Τhe concepts of freedom, survival and diversity are the corpus across this narration which I named Hard. These universal concepts are being apprehended differently according to each individual personality that wears them. I stand by the notion that the boundaries of your language are the boundaries of your universe. Finally, my line addresses people that are in touch with their humanity. 100% human, as I like to say.
What is the story behind the name Hard.clo?
Hard.clo is not a typical brand, I would call it a project. An experimentation rather between creativity and fashion. The initial thought was to create bold images that would depict contemporary reality through a raw prism. An extension of this thought born the idea of the T-shirt line. Hard.clo is an amalgam of letters, languages and cultures. By taking taking the Cyrillic alphabet as a starting point,
I am trying to depict a new world. What fascinated me was the optical illusion of this alphabet. Because at a first glance it linguistically looks as close to Russian as well the Greek orthographic systems. The truth of course is that it stands independently far beyond both of them. What you read in each T-shirt are essentially the anagrams of English phrases to Cyrillic renditions.
How is the collection process evolving in general? Where do your inspirations come from?
We are working on a particular issue every season, starting from Humanity, Love and now, Space. The inspiration is everywhere. I’m inspired from art, movies, love and people surrounding me. I am deeply influenced by the culture of the Balkans and particularly their dynamic and unapologetic sense of fashion.
Where do you place Hard.clo in 5 years from now? What are your goals as a creative director?
As a brand that keeps evolving through constant exposure to multiple stimuli.
What are the most important and crucial points to become a world-known brand?
When a new project kicks off there is always a strong interest for it. But what’s important is how it will be received by society in general. In the case of HARD, fear over what’s ‘foreign’ is more intense than ever. HARD seeks to express thoughts and feelings that are found in these situations; it listens to, records and reproduces their sounds. Trying to fight back ignorance and fear through fashion and pop culture is one of the main mechanisms we have in our hands to make a step forward. The most important of all is to have a story to tell. Be a storyteller!
What do you think about Greek men’s dressing style?
Greeks have an evolution in dressing. Striking enough from social media, they are in line with today’s needs. At least a Greek man is well dressed.
Can you give us some tips on men’s Spring/Summer 2019 trends in general?
This summer tailoring is back and back in a big way. Tiny bum-skimmers. You should be wearing your suit but with absolutely nothing underneath. It is a season of cool handbag and a pair of casual sandals. The camp collar shirt is nothing new, but it found its way back into the top of the pops.
